Heritage Snippets of Sarawak
By J. H. Walker
ALTHOUGH newspaper references to the ‘White Rajah’ of Sarawak can be found as early as 1850, throughout the nineteenth century the first two Rajahs of Sarawak, James and Charles, were more commonly referred to simply as ‘Rajah Brooke’, a tradition that was popularised, if not initiated, by Hugh Low in his Sarawak, Its Inhabitants and Productions: Being Notes during a Residency in that Country with H. H. The Rajah Brooke (1848).
In 1899, however, the US Consul-General in Hong Kong, Rounsevelle Wildman, published The Malayan Coast from Penang to the Philippines, which included a chapter titled “The White Rajah of Borneo”. This formulation, which emphasised the Brooke Rajahs’ ‘Whiteness’, was endorsed by the publication in 1909 of S. Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde’s (semi-)official, The History of Sarawak under its Two White Rajahs, 1839-1908, with the phrase ‘White Rajah’ subsequently becoming ubiquitous in studies of Brooke-era Sarawak, including Ranee Sylvia’s The Three White Rajahs (1939).
I have spent my entire career as an historian of the Brooke State trying to expunge that term from the scholarly lexicon. First, James Brooke’s ethnicity was not relevant to his ascension to power. Almost all ruling dynasties and many noble families in the Malay world, including both of the noble patrilineages in Sarawak that use the titles Abang and Dayang and the Syeds (Sherifs) of the Ba ‘Alawi clan, are of foreign origin. The Brunei royal line, itself, descends from a Chinese, an Arab and an egg. Many office-holders in the Brunei Sultanate were Arabs or Melanaus, rather than Malays. In Borneo, as elsewhere, ethnicity was not the driver of identity in the mid-nineteenth century that it was to have become by that century’s close and, sadly, far beyond.
But the second, more important objection to the expression derives from its inaccuracy in describing both the ethnic and sociocultural background of the first Rajah and the nature of the regime that he established, neither of which could meaningfully be described as ‘White’. James’s grandmother, Ruth, was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Middleton and his Indian wife or mistress, making the first Rajah Eurasian. Although James’s Indian descent (from a great, great grandmother) might seem remote to us, it was socially real to him: he arrived in Sarawak in 1839 accompanied by a Middleton cousin, Joseph, who subsequently rose in the Sarawak Government to be responsible for policing.
Moreover, the social milieu in which James and his parents had lived in India was a creole, Indo-European one. Charles Kegan, whose son-in-law was appointed by James’s father, Thomas, to be young James’s guardian in England, had built a mosque to the memory of his Indian paramour. Thomas Brooke, himself, made financial provisions for an Indian woman, while the wife of James’s older half-brother, Charles William, had an Indian mother. Similarly, the probable mother of James’s natural-born son, Reuben, whom he recognised in 1857, was also part-Indian.
Most importantly, however, it needs to be emphasised that the Government established by the first Rajah depended on the collaboration and cooperation of Malays, Dayaks and Chinese, rather than on that of Europeans. Brunei had sought to govern Sarawak through the appointment of local noblemen who the Sultan entitled Datu. Following his installation by Rajah Muda Hassim on 24 September 1841, Rajah James recalled to Government service Datu Patinggi Ali, Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, Datu Bandar Rancha and Datu Tumanggong Mersal, who had led the Malay-Bidayuh revolt against Brunei rule, and at whose suggestion and with whose armed support James had become Rajah.
Having initiated and supported the Rajah’s rise to power, the Datus resumed their essential roles in government, taking responsibility for the administration of those areas traditionally associated with their families. The importance of the Malay Datus in the Government was further formalised by their role as judges in the Courts of Law and, in 1855, by the formation of the Supreme Council, on which the Datus were always to constitute a majority. At Lundu, in contrast, James removed the Malay noble, Datu Bandar Sumsu, from office, placing the district instead under the authority of Lundu’s highest-ranking Dayak chieftain, Orang Kaya Tumanggong Si Jugah. The broader participation of Dayaks in the Government was marked by their leaders’ acceptance from the Rajah of titles such as Setia Rajah, Tumanggong and Pemanca and, when the Rajah thought it necessary, by his own choice of Tuai Rumah (village headmen). Similarly, Chinese leaders in Kuching and Lundu accepted appointment by the Rajah as Kapitan Cina. There is little that is ‘White’ in these arrangements.
Notwithstanding James’s early employment of his fully European kinsmen (brother-in-law’s nephews), William Bloomfield Douglas and Arthur Crookshank; in addition to the Datus, Rajah James also employed a number of Eurasian officials in important roles. As well as Joseph Middleton, James had brought with him to Sarawak two Eurasian interpreters, Domingo de Rozario and Thomas Williamson. While de Rozario was reported subsequently to have served as the Rajah’s chef, Williamson, prior to his drowning in 1846, served as James’s Chief Minister. The Rajah’s reliance on Williamson’s administrative abilities cannot be overstated. He was accorded the title, Police Magistrate, in 1843 and in 1845 was entrusted by Rajah James with diplomatic missions to Brunei and to the Dayak communities at Lingga and Skrang.
The expansion of Rajah James’s power beyond Sarawak and Lundu also was dependent on Malays rather than Europeans. In 1844, having expelled Sherif Sahib from the Sadong River, James appointed a Sadong Malay, Abang Kassim, to administer the area, entitling him Datu Bandar. When he had occasion to remove Datu Bandar Kassim because of complaints of misrule by the Sadong population, he replaced him with Kassim’s brother, Abang Leman (who was married to a daughter of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur).
Furthermore, when the Rajah established his first fort outside of Kuching, at Skrang in 1849, he appointed a Malay-Arab noble, Sherif Moksain, to command it. He subsequently appointed another Malay, Abang Durop, who was the brother of Datu Patinggi Abdul Gapur, to the command of his second fort, at Kanowit.
The positions to which Sherif Moksain and Abang Durop were appointed, as fort commanders, were later recast under Rajah Charles as Residents, the most senior rank in the Sarawak Service, while that of Datu Bandar Kassim and Abang Leman corresponds to the second Rajah’s administrative rank of Outstation Officer.
Even in the Colony of Labuan, of which James was appointed Governor in 1848, the early Administration was marked by a distinctly creole flavour in its top ranks. James appointed as his Deputy Governor, William Napier, whose Eurasian daughter, Catherine, subsequently married the Colonial Secretary of Labuan, James Brooke’s friend, Hugh Low (cited above), who later became the Resident of Perak, in Malaya. In turn, Hugh and Catherine’s daughter, another Catherine, known as Kitty, married yet another Governor of Labuan, John Pope-Hennessey, who had a distinguished career as Governor also of Hong Kong, Sierra Leone, Mauritius and Barbados. Hugh and Catherine’s Eurasian son, Hugh Brooke Low, as we shall see, was to play his role at the most senior level of the Sarawak Service when his time came. From the careers of William Napier, Hugh Low and John Pope-Hennessey, the latter two of whom were knighted by Queen Victoria, it is apparent that marriage to Asian or Eurasian women was not the barrier to success in British society, nor the impediment to Imperial service at the highest level, in the mid-nineteenth century that it was to have become by the beginning of the twentieth.
James was forced to reconsider his appointment of Malay nobles to regional commands, however, by complaints from the local people. Complaints against Sherif Moksain caused the Rajah to recall him within months of his appointment, sending his own young cousin, William Brereton, to the fort instead. Similar complaints caused James to replace Abang Durop with Henry Steele. The replacement of Malays by Europeans in the administration of Skrang and Kanowit initiated a new policy under which, as forts were established, their commands were given to Europeans rather than to Malays: for example, Alan Lee to Lingga (1852), Charles Fox to Sarekei (1856) and Charles Grant to Belidah (1858). Although the Rajah’s European Officers were less likely to become entangled in local family and factional rivalries than were their Malay counterparts, they were not necessarily more effective in maintaining the Rajah’s authority, as the assassinations of Steele and Fox at Kanowit in 1859 demonstrate.
Following the replacement of Abang Durop with Henry Steele, therefore, the Rajah’s construction of forts created opportunities for Europeans and Eurasians in the Sarawak Service that had previously been taken by Malays. Europeans were regarded by local communities as, if not actual kinsmen of the Rajah (as many were), more closely connected to him than were Malays, however high-ranking. In addition to James’s Eurasian nephews, John Brooke Johnson and Charles Johnson (who later adopted the surname ‘Brooke’ and succeeded as second Rajah) and his cousin, William Brereton; Charles Grant, Spenser St. John, Henry Steele, Charles Fox and James Brooke (Fitz) Cruikshank all joined Arthur Crookshank (another kinsman) in the Government from the late 1840s onwards. This increased European element of the Government did not eliminate the role of Malays either in Kuching, where the Malay Datus continued to predominate on the Supreme Council, or in the Outstations, where these new officers depended heavily on Malay Native Officers for advice and support and, in many cases, on Malay women for companionship and, even, influence in the kampungs. Charles Johnson’s friendship with Abang Ain bin Datu Laksamana Minudeen after his appointment to Skrang in 1853, and his marriage to Abang Ain’s daughter, Dayang Mastiah, were exemplary in this regard, as, sadly, was Johnson’s subsequent abandonment of her.
Although also diminished, the importance of capable Eurasians (beyond members of the Brooke family) in the highest levels of the Government survived into the twentieth century. Whereas the tenure of Hugh Low’s Eurasian son, Hugh Brooke Low, as Resident of the Third Division was cut short by the latter’s premature death in 1887, Domingo de Rozario’s son, Dominik, was entrusted with command of the upper Rajang for 30 years until 1911. From 1911 onwards, however, the most senior levels of the Sarawak Service, beyond the Brooke family, were staffed entirely by Europeans.
Enduring as it did for more than a century, the nature of the Brooke State and of the officers administering it changed over time, as did the way that members of the Brooke family thought of and represented themselves. It is clear from his various relationships that Rajah James was comfortable in his Eurasian heritage and, given his friendship with Hugh Low, it seems that Low had the first Rajah’s approval to promote him to European audiences as “H. H. The Rajah Brooke”.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the pernicious doctrines of ‘Scientific Racism’ had ensured that Eurasian descents could form the grounds for discrimination in Britain and in the British Empire, more broadly. Charles’ and Vyner’s Indian descent were even more remote than James’s. Neither of them had had any experience of the creole world of James’s childhood, nor, in the face of emerging racial prejudices, would they have been able to have worn their Eurasian heritage as lightly in British society as James had. We are left to wonder whether it was the potential for racial prejudice that encouraged them to represent themselves and their Government as being more ‘White’ than they in fact were. Whether or not that was the case, it was the context in which they approved of Baring-Gould and Bampfylde and of Ranee Sylvia referring to them as ‘White Rajahs’ rather than as ‘Rajahs Brooke’.
But neither the displacement of Malays and Eurasians by Europeans at the most senior levels of the Sarawak Service, nor the representation of the Rajahs as being ‘White’, could overcome the fundamentally collaborative and hybrid nature of the Sarawak Government. In addition to the essential administrative role of the Native Officers, the establishment of the General Council in 1865 ensured the participation, however formal, of senior nobles and chiefs from all areas of Sarawak in the official mechanisms of Government, while the most senior Kuching Malays continued to predominate on the Supreme Council, which comprised, effectively, the Cabinet of successive Rajahs. It is not only inaccurate, therefore, to characterise the Rajahs and Government of Brooke-era Sarawak as ‘White’, doing so overlooks the central role of Asians and Eurasians in running the country.
Dr J. H. Walker is the author of Power and Prowess: The Origins of Brooke Kingship in Sarawak. He has published widely on Sarawak history and Malay political culture.
“Heritage Snippets of Sarawak” is a fortnightly column.
